Joji Hattori was born in Tokyo but spent his extraordinary childhood in Vienna, immersed in the musical life of the Seventies and Eighties there, learning from the greatest teachers in Vienna as well as regularly attending performances given by the likes of Carlos Kleiber, Leonard Bernstein, Karl Böhm, Herbert von Karajan, Vladimir Horowitz, Yehudi Menuhin, Nathan Milstein, Jessye Norman, Placido Domingo. In 1989 he won the Menuhin Competition which started off his rather versatile international career as concert violinist, chamber musician, conductor of chamber and symphony orchestras as well as operas. In 2014 he was appointed Principal Guest Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Balearic Symphony Orchestra in Palma de Mallorca while continuing as Associate Guest Conductor of the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, a position which he has held since 2004. He is also the Music Director of the open-air operetta festival at Schloss Kittsee in Austria. From 2003-09 he was Visiting Professor of Violin at the Royal Academy of Music, of which he is an Honorary Member.
“The Menuhin Competition provides a unique forum to those specially talented young musicians in the form of a biennial, educational festival.”
